Only about half of South African students entering college graduate, and only a little more than one-fourth of all students finish in the minimum period of time, according to recent research. Furthermore, the legacy of apartheid is apparent, with only 10 percent of black students entering college and less than 5 percent completing degrees.

Rip Rapson, president of The Kresge Foundation, and Maria Rosario Jackson, a senior adviser to the foundation’s Arts and Culture Progam, discussed creative placemaking in front of an audience at SphinxCon in Detroit earlier this year. An annual conference put on by the Sphinx organization, SphinxCon gathers leaders from various spheres to discuss challenges and solutions surrounding diversity in the performing arts. These are edited excerpts from their conversation.

Kresge’s online grant application system is working again as of Thursday afternoon. Due to a technical issue, it went offline Monday afternoon. Because of the interruption, the Detroit Program has extended one of the deadlines for its Arts Support grant opportunity.

Jackson, Mississippi’s Midtown neighborhood is one of its oldest. Incorporated in the early 1900s, the area’s warehouses are flanked by railroad spurs that are reminders of past economic activity. The neighborhood suffered after the construction of an interstate highway and the migration to nearby suburbs that followed. But today a social and economic revitalization effort is attracting entrepreneurs, investors and artists to the area. Midtown’s creative economy is key to the rebound.

A series of reports detailing how coal miners suffering black lung disease were denied benefits because lawyers withheld evidence and doctors ignored signs of the disease has been awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for Chris Hamby of The Center for Public Integrity.

The Kresge Foundation’s Detroit Program will again offer two-year grants to small, midsize and large arts and cultural organizations in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. Detroit Arts Support grants – part of the Kresge Foundation’s Detroit Program – provide unrestricted operating dollars to organizations in the performing, visual and literary arts. Funding is also available to institutions engaged in arts service, education and broadcasting.

Kresge’s Environment Program has completed a strategy refinement that more closely ties its climate change efforts to the foundation’s broad purpose of expanding opportunity for vulnerable people in America’s cities. The strategy builds on past efforts aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for the new circumstances and uncertainty that climate change introduces. Moving forward, the Environment Program will support activities that help communities build resilience in the face of climate change by:

Higher education in the United States has become a debt-for-diplomas system in which most students borrow increasing amounts and colleges increasingly use tuition revenue to balance their books. New statistics to buttress that case are in a recent report by the public-policy organization Dēmos, “ The Great Cost Shift Continues: State Higher Education Funding After the Recession.”

A new partnership of nonprofit, philanthropic and banking institutions will finance the expansion of community health centers, providing capital to help meet the healthcare needs of low-income communities. The Collaborative for Healthy Communities is a $130 million, three-year initiative that will provide a new source of capital for community health centers across the country.

College students’ writing skills significantly improve through use of Excelsior College’s new Online Writing Lab, or OWL, a nationwide pilot study shows. Students at Excelsior and five partner colleges in the stu

While individual community colleges explore new ways to foster student success, a growing initiative is adapting those efforts into statewide programs to attack the knotted problems of student access, retention and graduation. Through newly created statewide “Student Success Centers,” community colleges are better coordinating these success-focused initiatives. Usually organized through a state community college association these centers have staffs, budgets and advisory boards that create, implement, connect and promote programs and policies.

The California HealthCare Foundation and The Kresge Foundation have launched a multimillion-dollar initiative to invest in companies that serve community health centers. Over the next three years, the Partnering for Impact initiative will invest at least $5 million in several companies that have technology- or service-based solutions that help community health centers and clinics make their resources go further, increase patient access to care and lower the cost of providing care.

The Detroit Head Start Early Childhood Innovation Fund announces the formation of a new $4.5 million fund to benefit Head Start programs in Detroit. The fund will award competitive grants to newly selected Head Start sites to foster innovation and collaboration, and support better services and outcomes for young children and their families.

When he stopped taking classes at Northwestern Michigan College, Kulin Froelich knew a single math class stood between him and an associate’s degree. Like many adult students, the 29-year-old had sporadically attended several schools intending to piece together his transcripts for a degree. But working as a chef in a resort town, raising his toddler son, trying to buy a house and planning a wedding had kept him busy and away from academics the last few years. That missing math class just wasn’t his top priority.

The current issue of the journal National Civic Review includes an article tracing Kresge’s journey to imagine – and work toward – a more equitable, effective healthcare system. David Fukuzawa, managing director for Kresge’s Health Program, was invited to contribute the article as part of a special project focusing on the healthy communities movement launched 25 years ago.

In summer of 2012, residents of Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood were increasingly concerned about the railroad yard in their south side community. Chicago is the busiest rail gateway in the United States, and the 140-acre Norfolk Southern rail yard in Englewood was ready to expand over 84 additional acres. With a goal of insisting that public health and quality of life are protected, a coalition of unlikely partners vowed to create a win-win outcome for residents and the railroad alike.

A house of worship and then a soup kitchen, South Park Calvary United Presbyterian Church had been a focal point for the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Newark, N.J., for some 160 years. A fire in 1992 destroyed much of the building, leaving only the facade standing.

Many students and employers remain unconvinced about the value of a for-profit college education, according to new research from Public Agenda. Although for-profit students are largely satisfied with the quality of their schools, many consider the financial burden of these schools high, and it is unclear to them whether that cost will pay off.

A year ago, the long-awaited Detroit Future City framework was released to rousing applause from a room of 250 Detroiters, a cross-section of leaders from politics and business to community activism and philanthropy.